Christopher Daniels and an adorable stuffed tiger? That sound you hear is my brain folding in on itself.

Worst: Bully Ray forgets he’s on TV

Brook Hogan got engaged, and congrats to her! But what does this have to do with kayfabe? Surely real life events can be kept separate from a storyline because at the end of the day, TNA can respect that we’re not entirely stupid and know that you can be fictionally married to someone on a television show but single or engaged off of it. Oh…wait…no? This is really what we’re doing? Bully Ray is really, really mad and super possessive of someone he tricked into marrying him because he was trying to fool the entire roster about not being the leader of Aces & Eights?

When I pause the show to put my head in my hands like a someone on the cover of a “Dealing With Your Grief” pamphlet, you have done a bad, bad thing, TNA.

Best: Dismissive Mike Tenay

<em>ilu lizard face</em>

Isn’t it special? Isn’t it nice?? I hope the first person who tries to explain kayfabe to Mike Tenay understands that they’re immediately walking into a sworn blood oath against them.

Worst: Ssshhh….

I am 100% sick of being yelled at each week. I get it. You’re a bully named Bully. You’re a bad bad man who does bad bad things. We all get it. Yelling is what you’ve always done, and apparently it’s what you’ll always do. It’s incredibly disappointing, however, to see someone who has gone through so much progression in his career – physically, character wise – fall back on old, boring habits.

This is where the part of my brain that makes stuff up in order to rationalize things kicks in, and I think well, maybe he’s gone back to that because he is a bully, and they’re playing into the trope of the toughest, loudest guys secretly being the most vulnerable. But then I realize I am giving a heck of a lot of credit to people who unmasked someone for NO REASON just to put them back into a mask for NO REASON with a new name for NO REASON.

Guess who would have been 100% more negative about that part of last week’s show had they written about it.

Worst: Tazz

He totally stole my joke about Kurt Angle’s sunglasses. What a Tazzhole.

Worst: Main Event Mafia, because of course it f-cking is

I don’t want to say I told you so, but guys, come on. I told you so. I hold out hope every week that something that was terrible the last week will be fixed and great again this week, and I love the optimism a lot of you darling dearest readers showed when the MEM was just a solitary Sting. I try to be positive but it somehow just keeps getting worse and worse. I know Brandon was extremely critical, and rightfully so, last week, but good lord, GET OFF THE F-CKING APRON, STING. If we’ve established that Aces & Eights still have a right to be there despite their Orlando clubhouse presumably being set ablaze because that’s the only thing that will kill some of those germs, they have as much right to be there as you do, Sting. That was not your match, yet SOMEHOW everything was all about you. Again. Just the way it was the first time around.

If you want to do something in the Impact roster’s best interest, you and your gang of funsuckers will let wrestling happen, and stop interrupting every single thing with your goddamn N64 game dungeon level theme song. Unless you start showing us your scrapbook of that time you all drove to Paramus to buy suits (obviously titled Who do you want? Paramus!), I will kindly take a pass on everything you’re doing, sirs.

Best: Spinny Royal Rumble Picker Thingy

AHHHHHHHHHHHH. I don’t know what it’s actually called, but it is a B-E-S-T Best. It’s one of those great little throwback touches that immediately sets my heart ablaze with thoughts of Royals Rumble past. Using it to pick the TOTALLY RANDOM sequence of entrances into the Joker’s Wild tournament? You’re doing a good, good thing, TNA.

Best: Jeff Hardy

Congratulations, Jeff Hardy, on being the 30th entrant into the 1989 Royal Rumble. Ted DiBiase is looking for you, and I think he wants to make a deal.

If I was ever going to mix and mash WWE and TNA: It would just be 2 hours of Joseph Park and Emma being Joseph Park and Emma and then like 40 minutes of Taryn Terrell/ Gail Kim/ AJ Lee/ Paige/ Mickie James/ Natalya Elimination Chamber with Yoshi Tatsu and William Regal commentating (Because Yoshi’s Japanese, I dig Japan.)

Danielle, you deserve to be named a saint because I don’t know how you can watch this garbage on a weekly basis. Reading some of the stuff happening on TNA makes me appreciate even the worst of Raw episodes (like episode 998).

With that said, OMFG!!!!!!!! That Knockouts Ladder match was incredible!!!!!!

Taryn Terell’s Dragon Sleeper choke on Gail Kim as Kim is dangling off the ladder was INSANE. Someone needs to send this to people of high power in the WWE and tell them they need to get their shit together with the Diva’s division.

Very solid episode of Impact this week, and I love (LOVE!!) “random” tag pairings via a Lethal Lottery (TM?). However, I must disagree on one point, Danielle. I can’t stand it when the tag pairings get overly predictable. Yes, a little mixing and matching of tag teams can be fun, as I enjoyed the dynamic between Daniels and Kazarian facing each other. But…did they have to leave that match until the end? Once it got down to the final four, it became too obvious what the final matchup would be. For that matter, OF COURSE Magnus and Mr. Anderson end up on a team together. Yes, I get that they have to continues their storyline, but it can be just as fun to see random guys wrestle together who don’t necessarily have a grudge (see Jeff Hardy rolling his eyes at Park’s over-zealousness).

I know Brandon has mentioned this before in reference to when WCW used to do their Battle Bowl series (which was generally great), but eventually every match became teammates facing each other and enemies forced to team. I realize TNA only had three of these matches, so it wasn’t that bad, but still… The lottery gimmick can be great if it’s used sparingly, but it can be just as fun (maybe more) if they run it honestly (or at least, with a little less predictability).

they already did that on the actuall “wild card tag team tournament one night only ppv” ! (which I thought was kinda fun a little bit but didn’t give a lot of “wrestling” if that’s what you look for like me)

we saw pairing such as joseph park with bobby roode, daniels with joe and even chavo guerrero with rob van dam (UGH !) but at the same time it had the obvious aces & 8’s pairings together with knux and devon or doc and briscoe and such …

This was not a terrible episode.If anything it shows that TNA can be better . Totally agree with you about many points. I turn the sound OFF when ever Bully ray has a mic in his hand. We all have internet access so why are they still selling the Brooke/Bully story? The segment where Taz was away from the commentary..more of this PLEASE!!!! By that I mean keep him as far away from a mike as possible. Joseph Park YES!!! Rampage Jackson..NO!! Mr.Anderson, was he ever good? I was boycotting the WWE for a while so never saw him in his “prime” all I know is he absolutely is stealing a paycheck from TNA. The knockouts match was good and yes ,this is how Knockouts/Divas matches should roll. If I see one more WWE match where Kaitlyn almost hurts herself or her opponent because the other Diva(not you AJ my love ,or Natalya) don’t know how to take bump or are just bad I will scream.

but seriously, the young bucks vs bad influence ladder match from TNA’s one night only hardcore justice PPV was another “favourite wrestling match of the year !” candidate over there along with bryan vs rollins (or any bryan vs shield match), cena vs punk, aries vs roode and bad influence vs dirty heels a couple weeks ago … no, it WAS “my personal favourite wrestling match of the year so far !!!” indeed !

the rest of the ppv got some delightful things like shark boy, father james mitchell, bully ray being a serious “bully” without much shouting (!) joseph park (ofcourse) and even funaki ! (and it isn’t ruined by taz because JB is tenay’s partner on that night ! although the IZ crowd are their usuall horrible selves)

you “need” to buy it or stream it or watch it in anyway possible if for nothing other than the young bucks vs bad influence terrific ladder !

i liked that ladder match alot as well. my only nitpick was the figure four on the ladder. terrell had to blatantly grab her own leg to stay on the ladder so gail could lock it in. other than that, a fantastic match.

Hats off Danielle for writing this column week in and week out tolerating the 95% of crap and 5% of redeeming stuff that happens every week.This show though had 20% redemption thanks to an awesome women’s bout with a unique ending.

And whatever happened to the Rampage Angle nose twitching fest that happened some time back?

however, I’d like to also say that IMPACT isn’t as bad as you guys think it is (or at least I’m the only one that feels that way around here) and I would be really happy to recap it every week if I were Danielle ! but still, no one EVER can be as delightful and write as well as Danielle can, so I’m super happy and thankful to have her :)

That’s still no logical reason for him to be part of MEM. Unless they want to pull of a stupid swerve and have Quinton betray Angle to join Aces & 8’s or you know at least cost them their match at Bound for Glory.

Have a bad feeling though that they’ll be doing MEM stuff like Gut Check with Angle and Sting being Al Snow and Rampage as Brisco with Angle training and judging Rampage and finally give his worthless seal of approval that he’s ready to fight.

gotta agree with you to an extent .. but since I don’t care about the whole MEM vs aces & 8’s thing now, I don’t mind them doing whatever they want to do with that !

seriously, all I’m waiting from the MEM vs aces & 8’s storyline to achieve is to put out the aces & 8’s for good, be something that we can refer to as one of magnus’s accomplishments in the future when he becomes a world champion in his hometown in the next UK tour or something AND just get IMPACT’s ratings up (because sadly, TNA’s audiance are mostly above 40 years old that just want to live their past by watching this sort of old-school feeling show and only few of people that want change and want things to be better with young guys taking over and no more factions’ wars in TNA)